


Three Stops Made By The Beatrice, Before Its Inevitable Demise (THREE)

by cosmogyral



Series: Three Stops Made By The Beatrice [3]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Middleman - Fandom
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-24
Updated: 2010-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmogyral/pseuds/cosmogyral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>THREE. The Eponymous Submarine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Stops Made By The Beatrice, Before Its Inevitable Demise (THREE)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [erraticvariable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erraticvariable/gifts).



Klaus and Violet exchanged glances. "I'm sorry," Violet said, "but we've had extremely bad experiences with submarines."

"So have I!" This was a woman's voice. "Boss, let's just go up there."

"Drops of Jupiter, Wendy Watson," the man said, "I'm surprised at you. These children and adolescents have spent enough time on a leaky raft in the middle of the North Atlantic!"

Violet opened her mouth, presumably to object, but was interrupted by the massive sound of a ship's horn. When the sound subsided, the man was still talking: "--and it's long past time I showed you the Middlebarge."

"I've had extremely bad experiences with ocean liners," muttered Wendy Watson. "Holy Transformers, is that thing--?"

As they watched in a mingling of apprehension, fascination, and, on Violet's part, deep professional curiosity, the waters in front of them shuddered and the submarine supermarined, transforming as it went. By the time it was fully above water, it was also an impressive and implausible boat.

"That boat is both impressive and implausible," said Sunny, staring. "What do they call it?"

"The Middlebarge, of course," the Middleman yelled down to them. "Come up!"

The Middlebarge came fully equipped with a drinks cabinet, and Violet accepted a small glass of wine. Klaus, hefting Beatrice on his hip, settled down in the opposite chair with a can of !!!!!, which Sunny promptly absconded with.

"Hey, nothing _else_ we own has a Middledrinkscabinet," Wendy Watson said. "...This is left over from the last Middleman, isn't it? This is his dashing pad of 1960s heterosexuality."

"Dubby...I would strongly suggest that you not sit on that couch," the Middleman admitted, and slid his own glass of milk into a swanky cupholder. "To business! So you know the Great Unknown. Or, to be more accurate, you _don't_ know it."

Violet and Klaus exchanged glances, the other way this time. "We don't know it extremely well," Klaus said. "We've been not knowing what it is since before our youngest sister was born."

For the first time since they had left Ishmael's island, they told the whole story. They started with the island, then worked their way backwards, past the Hotel Denoument, through the Village of Fowl Devotees, across the icy waters of Lake Lachrymose, and then back finally to the sands of Briny Beach, where they had stood, three of them, as Mr. Poe told them that their parents were dead.

There are times when nothing that anyone says can be appropriate. If, for example, you tell your husband one night that you are very tired and you don't want to dance for him, and in response he decides to get a divorce and hold auditions for a better wife, then there is probably very little you want to hear, except for a list of instructions for his deposition. If the woman you love vanishes in a flutter of costume wings into the night because you've failed to correctly prep a sugar bowl, it is very unlikely that there will ever be anything anyone can say to you again that will not make you wish to weep uncontrollably, or write a thirteen-book series about her children. And this was one of those situations. There was no sound after they finished their recitation except for Violet, who took a deep drink from her little glass.

"Wow," said Wendy Watson, finally. "That sucks."

It seemed strangely apt.

After they had considered the facts of the case for a while, Violet went out to the prow of the ship to investigate the mechanism that turned it into a submarine, in hopes that it would calm her down. It did not, but Wendy Watson, following her out, had a different effect.

"My father disappeared when I was fourteen," Wendy Watson said. "I know it's not really the same thing, but I get what it's like to lose your parents in mysterious and as yet unexplained circumstances. Which, see previous statement: it sucks. But you guys seem to be doing pretty okay."

Violet gave a yank on a wrench to uncover a small panel in the gunwale. "We're together and no one's managed to kill us. It isn't as though we've become the Boxcar Children."

"Hah," Wendy Watson said. "Like that's not exactly the metric of success we use around here. I mean, plus 'the world hasn't ended.' But--" She gestured around to indicate that the world had not, in fact, ended, though it was certainly a subjective measure. There was a companionable silence, then Wendy Watson added, "Anyway. If you need a job in ten years or so. Give me a call."

In the morning, they lowered themselves back down onto the boat. Not a word had been said about the Great Unknown since the previous night, but the Middleman presented them ceremoniously with a radar gun, a harpoon, several bushels of apples, _The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles_, and an extremely old map, which instead of the traditional directions around the compass rose showed the characters "V F D ?"

_The Beatrice_ set sail, Beatrice laughing happily in its prow. Violet tied her hair back from her face and put her feet up as they caught the wind. They were headed in no direction in particular, a phrase which here means "passing like night from land to land," a phrase which in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner means "still alive."

**Author's Note:**

> Photo from the National Media Museum.


End file.
